dip N dollop

Now that I'm working from home, a lot of the projects I'm working on revolve around organization for the office so that I can get settled in to my office.  I love having a cork board that I can pin things to that I either need to remember long-term so I have it to refer to quickly, or for things that recently changed so that I have it posted in front of me as a constant flag of something that changed.

But with all of the work I've been putting in to my office, the last thing I wanted hanging on my wall was an ugly, plain, boring old brown cork board.  I was at Hobby Lobby and saw this grey and white damask print fabric and fell in love.  However, it was a little too busy for me to use in a large area.  Then it hit me.  Wouldn't it be cool if I could pin stuff to this awesome looking damask fabric.  Then the skies opened and rays of sun shone down on me and I heard angels singing.  Okay, it wasn't that dramatic, but I did get really excited by the idea. 

I bought a plain cork board that fit my wall space, then taped it off and painted the frame the same lime green that I've been using for an accent color over the entire room.  I'm sure you could get away with painting the frame without taping it off, but I'm messy and didn't want to chance any excess paint showing through my fabric so I took the extra step.

I did two coats of paint on the frame of the cork board.  To be honest, it probably could have used a third coat.  That frame really soaked up paint!  But I lost patience, and the two coats gave it a weathered look, so I stuck with it.  Side note - does anyone else love these foam brushes as much as I do?  They're great for small projects, and I personally hate cleaning brushes so I stock up with Michael's has them like 14/$1 or 20/$1 so I can just toss them when I'm done with them.  No cleaning required!

After the paint was dried, I ironed my fabric and made sure to lay it out perfectly flat.  You want to make sure there are no wrinkles!  I laid the cork board on top of the fabric with the edges of the cork board hanging off of the edges of the fabric.  Then I used my rotary cutter to cut along the sides of the cork board, so I ended up with a piece of fabric that was just slightly larger than the cork board's surface (not including the frame).

Once I had my fabric cut out, I brought everything up out of my basement, where it was cold and clearly has pretty poor lighting, and laid it out on the kitchen table.  I laid the fabric right side up on top of the cork, and grabbed a putty knife to slide the fabric into the space in between the cork and the frame.  I found a flexible metal putty knife to work perfectly for this step- it was slim enough to slide in the gap between cork and frame and flexible enough to catch the fabric and slide it in the gap.  This step is where you want to make sure you don't have a huge "seam allowance" on your fabric.  Too much fabric won't fit under the wooden frame, but be careful if you trim the edges to make sure that you're still leaving enough to cover the cork.  (I hope that makes sense!)  The corner of the putty knife is also perfect for getting small pieces of fabric under that frame, and works well in the corners.

I found what worked best for me was to pull the fabric tight and tuck it under the frame about six inches or so ahead of where I was working.  That way I knew the fabric would stay nice and tight and I didn't have to worry about it pulling or wrinkling, then I could go back after the preliminary "tucking" and use the edge of the knife to make sure all of the material was tucked under the frame.

Once I got in to a groove, I think it took me about 30 minutes to work my way around the entire board.  I used a tweezers to grab a couple of loose threads that were hanging out, and voila!  I had my pretty damask cork board.

Go ahead and grab some push pins and pin away!